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The Blockchain Socialist

Latest episodes

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Feb 5, 2023 • 52min

Overthrowing The Network State: Forming New Publics and Pluralism with Glen Weyl

In the second episode of OTNS,  Primavera (@yaoeo) and I are speaking to Glen Weyl (@glenweyl), the founder of RadicalxChange and a co-author of Vitalik Buterin's article on Decentralized Society. During the discussion we spoke about Balaji's oversimplifications in the book, how TNS was not written for human beings, and Glen's alternative for a Networked Society differs.Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State  by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. You can find the first episode of OTNS where we give our initial criticisms and  alternatives here. Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Jan 29, 2023 • 1h 14min

Overthrowing The Network State: An Initial Critique and Alternatives

NEW SERIES: Overthrowing the Network State in collaboration with BlockchaingovIn the first episode of our series 'Overthrowing The Network State' (OTNS), we dive into the world of Balaji Srinivasan's recent book The Network State. The purpose of this series is to critique The Network State while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures. For this episode I'm joined by Primavera De Filippi (@yaoeo), a long time researcher on blockchain and the director of Blockchaingov as a co-host. We give a brief overview of who Balaji Srinivasan is, some of the main concepts in his book, our initial criticisms, and some alternative book recommendations. By OTNS we don't want to  only provide critique, but we want to provide a very different conceptual framework that answers why people people seem to be tapping into the book. For us this is about exit-based governance (lack of politics with an idealistic view of autonomy ) vs. commons-based governance (which recognizes the inherent ‘interdependence’ of the world and global society).Blockchaingov is a 5-year long, transdisciplinary research effort aimed at restoring trust in institutions at the community and global levels, by promoting better on chain and off chain distributed governance practices. Throughout the series, each discussion will include me and a member of Blockchaingov with either a new guest each episode or just a discussion between us to tackle various topics from the book.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Jan 21, 2023 • 1h 5min

Socialist Tokens: There would be no taxes under socialism

For this interview I spoke to Dr. Phillipp Dapprich, a post doc at the University of Potsdam in political theory who did his doctors thesis on socialist central planning studying under Paul Cockshott. He recently published a paper titled Tokens make the world go round: socialist tokens as an alternative to money.During the interview we spoke about why socialists are interested in economic planning, his proposal for using non-exchanging socialist tokens to facilitate a socialist economy for consumer goods, and some potential technological implementations of it. We also discussed how Phillipp's proposal differs from labour vouchers and why there would be no taxes under socialism.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Jan 14, 2023 • 2min

Teaser - An Anticapture framework for left organizing

For this bonus episode, I dive into the Anticapture framework by Spencer Graham which professes a taxonomy and structure for creating "capture-resistant governance" for an organization. While the piece itself was meant for DAOs, I think there were some interesting things said in the piece that are very relevant for socialist organizations. The piece also paired well with a book I'm currently reading called Neither Vertical nor Horizontal by Rodrigo Nunes which explores the question of organization in the context of left wing political struggle. I can highly recommend the book. You can access the full episode through Patreon or on my website through the Unlock Protocol integration by purchasing the TBS Membership NFT for 10 BREAD which can be created through the Breadchain Crowdstaking Application for 10 DAI on Polygon.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Dec 25, 2022 • 1h 38min

The Question of Funding in Palestine

I spoke to Yazan Khalili and Sami Khaldi, Palestinian activists who started a project called The Question of Funding which is an art collective that presented at Documenta 15 this past year.  They had a discussion on Outland with Monalisa Gharavi in November about their project as well. During the discussion we spoke about how Israel has forced a reliance on  financialization in Palestine, how this has affected the society's older systems of grassroots support, and what types of solutions the group is working on using blockchain called Dayra. We also spoke about the attacks they received during Documenta from Israeli groups. More on The Question of FundingDayra and Communal DebtThe Question of RagequittingIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Dec 11, 2022 • 1h 34min

Algorithms All the Way Down: People Die, Capital Does Not

For this interview I spoke to Ian Wright (@ianpaulwright), the author of the Dark Marxism blog which explores Marxism and the occult. Ian is also a programmer who has worked in machine learning and artificial intelligence.During the discussion we spoke about what Marx means when he refers to capital as a "real God", how capital is like an algorithm controlling our lives in ways we often don't fully comprehend, and venture communism.  Ian also provides a case for why the Left should take crypto more seriously from an internationalist point of view.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Dec 4, 2022 • 1h 18min

SBF proves we live in post post post-modernism (clown world)

I'm sure most reading this probably have heard the news about the collapse of FTX and the ensuing crypto financial contagion it's caused. A lot of strange and bad analyses are being spread around crypto Twitter and elsewhere so Ben Basche (@basche42) and I try to describe a more reasonable account of the situation that doesn't flirt with fascism.During the interview we review and contextualize the series of events, the strange literalness of everything, and what the next steps are. We also discuss Ben's article on the road ahead for crypto which you can find on his Mirror page.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Nov 27, 2022 • 1h 12min

Techno-Utopianism vs Class Struggle Technologism

For this interview I spoke to Izzy Meckler (@izmeckler), the Chief Science Officer of 0(1) Labs which is currently building the Mina Protocol. Mina is a blockchain that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to be as light and scalable as possible. Izzy is also an active member of East Bay DSA and has a blog called Parametricity.During the interview we spoke about his journey from making a startup to becoming a socialist and converting it to a worker-owned cooperative, how zero-knowledge proofs work, and the political implications of these technologies.Mentioned SourcesOn MoralismOn Techno-UtopianismMina Protocol DocumentationsnarkyJS GithubIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Nov 20, 2022 • 1h 15min

Talking Politics with Vitalik Buterin (Part 2)

I interviewed Vitalik Buterin about his thoughts on the political aspects of crypto. It was a candid discussion about his book "Proof of Stake", the evolution of Ethereum, and the dangers of the far right.Although our discussion happened just before the current scandal with FTX, there were many relevant threads. History has shown that similar types of events can create openings for radicalization and it's important that we make the appropriate moves to tamp down the fascistic tendencies in this space. This is the second half of the full 2.5 hour long discussion we had. Although you don't have to, I'd recommend listening to the first half of the interview which you should be able to find it on whichever platform you're listening to this episode.Very big thank you to alritedi for helping produce this episode . You can hear his music throughout the episode and find his music through his linktree.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.
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Nov 13, 2022 • 1h 18min

Talking Politics with Vitalik Buterin (Part 1)

I interviewed Vitalik Buterin about his thoughts on the political aspects of crypto. It was a candid discussion about his book "Proof of Stake", the evolution of Ethereum, and the dangers of the far right.Although our discussion happened just before the current scandal with FTX, there were many relevant threads. History has shown that similar types of events can create openings for radicalization and it's important that we make the appropriate moves to tamp down the fascistic tendencies in this space. This is just the first half of the full 2.5 hour long discussion we had. The second half of the interview will be released next week, or if you can't wait that long, you can listen to the full interview already through Patreon, or the crypto native way via Unlock Protocol on my website. To do this you will need to buy a Membership NFT with BREAD tokens on the Polygon network. You can get the tokens with DAI here and learn more about the application here. The NFT works similar to Patreon in that it allows a monthly recurring payment of 10 BREAD, but will give access to all future paid content directly on this website. You only need to pay 10 BREAD for access to this interview and continuously only if you want to support and get access to future bonus content.If in the past you have purchased an NFT on Mirror from a Breadchain Cooperative article, you've also been airdropped a membership NFT to the same wallet and should be able to access the full interview without paying. Very big thank you to alritedi for helping produce this episode . You can hear his music throughout the episode and find his music through his linktree.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

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